GEO 594 -- Geographic Information and Society

State University of New York -- University at Buffalo

Co-Taught by Dr. Meghan Cope and Dr. David Mark

Department of Geography

Spring 2005

NEW: See bottom of this page for information and due dates for final project proposal and final projects.

Updated March 23, 2005

Course Information:

Meeting time and place: Fridays, 9:00 - 11:40 am; Wilkeson 106

Dr. Cope's Office Hours: Wed. 1:00 - 2:30 or by appt. Wilkeson 118; mcope@buffalo.edu

Dr. Mark's Office Hours: Thurs. 12:30 - 1:30 Wilkeson 301F; dmark@buffalo.edu

Overview:

This course is intended to enable participants to review, understand, and critique the historical and emerging literature on the intersections of geographic information and societal issues. From early critiques by social theorists of GIS and its practitioners, through the joint accommodations made by varying 'camps' in these debates, and up to the present-day explorations of issues such as combining qualitative and quantitative analysis in GIS, feminist perspectives, and epistemological reconciliations, these intersections have provided many opportunities for lively discussions and debates. All graduate students with an interest in Geographic Information Systems/Science and a wish to understand their development and practice in a grounded social/political/economic context are welcome.

Evaluation of Students:

• Weekly Critiques and Discussion Leadership: Each student should prepare a one-paragraph critique/question on the week's readings and submit it to the discussion board (on UBLearns) by Thursday afternoon. Additionally, each week a pair of students will take on the role of 'discussion leaders' to summarize the questions raised by the readings and help guide our discussion in class. 20% of total grade.
• Mid-term: the mid-term paper involves writing a critical book review of Nadine Shuurman's GIS: A Short Introduction. The review should follow typical book review format and be approximately 7-9 pages. 30% of total grade.
• Final Project: This is a chance to follow an interest of your own within the scope of GI & Society. A one-page proposal (10% of total grade) is due in late March in which you will outline what you want to do and provide a bibliography. The final project (40% of total grade) may be either a paper (~15 pages) or some other product (web-site, poster, etc.).

Recommended books:

Curry, Michael. 1998. Digital Places: Living with Geographic Information Technologies. NY: Routledge. (we will read several chapters from this in April)

Shuurman, Nadine. 2004. GIS: A short introduction. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. (you will need this for your mid-term)

Course Schedule: All readings required for all students unless otherwise noted. Readings are mostly available in pdf through UBLearns, but some will be handed out and there are two recommended books (Curry and Shuurman).

Discussion leaders for the week are in BLUE text.

Jan. 21    Introduction to Geographic Information and Society

• Schuurman, N. 2000. Trouble in the Heartland: GIS and its critics in the 1990s. Progress in Human Geography 24(4): 569-590.
• Sui, D. and M. Goodchild, 2003. A tetradic analysis of GIS and society using McLuhan’s law of the media. The Canadian Geographer 47(1): 5-17.

Jan. 28    History of the GIS(Sc) and Social Theory Debates    Matt & Frank

• Harley, J.B. 1989. Deconstructing the Map. Cartographica 26(2): 1-20.
• Pickles, J. 1995. Ground Truth, Chapter 1.
• Miller, R. 1995. Beyond Method, beyond ethics: integrating social theory into GIS and GIS into social theory. Cartography and Geographic Information Systems 22: 98-103.

Feb. 4    Social Construction of Technology/Technological Construction of Society     Chris, Jason

• Wright, D.; M. Goodchild; J. Proctor. 1997. GIS: Tool or Science? Demystifying the persistent ambiguity of GIS as ‘tool’ vs. ‘science’. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87(2): 346-362.
• Pickles, J. 1997. Tool or Science? GIS, technoscience and the theoretical turn. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87(2): 363-372. (Response to Wright, et al.)
• Schuurman, N. 2002. Reconciling Social Constructivism and Realism in GIS. ACME 1: 75-90.

Feb. 11   Space, Culture, Indigenous Peoples and Tribal GIS    Jason, Shannon, and Frank

Note: please read at least 4 of the below 5 readings -- we realize this is a lot for one week.

• Rundstrom, R., 1995. GIS, Indigenous Peoples, and Epistemological Diversity. Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, 22 (1): pp 45-57.
• Winchell, D. G., Goodman, J. M., Jett, S. C., and Henderson, M. L., 1989. Geographic research on native Americans. In: G. L. Gaile and C. J. Wilmott, editors, Geography in America, Columbus: Merrill Publishing Company, pp. 239-255.*
• Rundstrom, R.; Deur, D.; Berry, K.; and Winchell, D. 2003. American Indian Geography. In Gaile & Wilmott, editors, Geography in America at the Dawn of the 21st Century, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 600-615.*

• Turk, A.G. and Trees, K.A. 1999. Ethical Issues Concerning the Use of Geographic Information Systems Technology With Indigenous Communities. Proceedings of the Australian Institute of Computer Ethics Conference, AICEC99, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 385-398. **

• Turk, A. 2000. Tribal Boundaries of Australian Indigenous Peoples. Paper presented at EuroConference - Ontology and Epistemology for Spatial Data Standards, La Londe-les-Maures, France. **

* Please note in particular the differences between these two readings from 1989 and 2003.

** These readings are available on UBLearns in our class space. Thanks to Andrew Turk for giving us access to them.

And... visit the following sites:

First Nations Mapping and GIS

ESRI Native/First Nations Index

Native Lands

Yanyuwa Traditional Environmental Knowledge
http://sres.anu.edu.au/people/richard_baker/research/yanyuwa/
 

Feb. 18   Public Participation GIS 1    Chris, Joanna, Matt

• Al-Kodmany, K. 1999. Combining digital and traditional visualization techniques in community-based planning and design. Digital Creativity, 10(2): 91-103.
• Description and 3-4 selections from the Project Varenius PPGIS page: http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/varenius/ppgis/

Feb. 25    Public Participation GIS 2    Shannon, Joanna

·        Elwood, S. and H. Leitner. 2003. GIS and Spatial Knowledge Production for Neighborhood Revitalization: Negotiating State Priorities and Neighborhood Visions. Journal of Urban Affairs, 25(2): 139-157.

• McLafferty S, 2002. Mapping women’s worlds: knowledge, power and the bounds of GIS. Gender, Place and Culture 9(2): 263-269
• Sieber, R. 2000. Conforming (to) the opposition: the social construction of geographical information systems in social movements. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 14(8): 775-793.

    And check out these websites:

• West Harlem Environmental Action, Community Risk Map
• Social and Economic Implications of Information Technologies: A Bibliographic Database Pilot Project

March 4  Ethics in GIS and Society       Chris, Frank, LaDona

Note: we will split these readings up so that not everyone is responsible for each article. This will give you more time to prepare your mid-term.

• Onsrud, H. 1995. Identifying Unethical Conduct in the Use of GIS. Cartography and Geographic Information Systems 22(1):

• Curry, M. 1995. GIS and the inevitability of ethical inconsistency. In Pickles, J. (ed.) Ground Truth, pp. 68-87.

• Haque, A. 2003. Information technology, GIS, and democratic values: Ethical implications for IT professional in public service. Ethics and Information Technology. 5(1): 39-48.

• Esnard, A-M. 1998. Cities, GIS, and Ethics. Journal of Urban Technology 5(3): 33-45.

• Ratcliffe, J. 2002. Damned if you don't, damned if you do: Crime Mapping and its implications in the real world. Policing and Society 12(3): 211-255.

March 7 (Monday) Mid-Term Papers due in to digital drop box by 4 pm

March 11    Multiple Methods 1: Doing Multimethod Human Ecology    Matt, Joanna

• Turner, M.D. and P.J. Taylor. 2003. Critical reflections on the use of remote sensing and GIS technologies in human ecological research. Human Ecology 31(2): 177-182 (a short introduction to the special issue)
• Heasley, L. 2003. Shifting boundaries on a Wisconsin landscape: can GIS help historians tell a complicated story? Human Ecology 31(2): 183-213.
• Jiang, H. 2003. Stories remote sensing images can tell: integrating remote sensing analysis with ethnographic research in the study of cultural landscapes. Human Ecology 31(2): 215-232.
• Robbins, P. 2003. Beyond Ground Truth: GIS and the environmental knowledge of herders, professional foresters, and other traditional communities. Human Ecology 31(2): 233-254.

March 18         UB Spring Break – No class

March 25   Multiple Methods 2: Analysis and Representation    Matt, Frank

• Krygier, J. 1999. Cartographic Multimedia and Praxis in Human Geography and the Social Sciences. In: W. Cartwright, M. Peterson, and G. Gartner, Multimedia Cartography. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
• Nightingale A. 2003. A feminist in the forest: situated knowledges and mixing methods in natural resource management. ACME 2: 77-90
• Pavlovskaya M. 2002. Mapping urban change and changing GIS: other views of economic restructuring. Gender, Place and Culture 9: 281-289

April 1    Feminist Perspectives on GIS     LaDona, Chris, Frank, Shannon

• Kwan M-P. 2002. Feminist visualization: re-envisioning GIS as a method in feminist geographic research. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92: 645-661
• Kwan M-P. 2002. Is GIS for women? Reflections on the critical discourse in the 1990s. Gender, Place and Culture 9(2): 271-279
• Schuurman N. 2002. Women and technology in geography: a cyborg manifesto for GIS. The Canadian Geographer 46: 258-265
• Shuurman N. and G. Pratt. 2002. Care of the subject: feminism and critiques of GIS. Gender, Place and Culture 9(2): 291-299

April 8            AAG Meetings – No Class, but proposals for final projects are due to the digital drop box by 5:00 pm. See below for details.

April 15  Digital Places    Shannon, Frank, Chris

• Introduction (pp. 1-7)
• Ch. 6: "Who Owns Geographic Information?" (pp. 87-99)
• Ch. 7 "The Digital Individual in a Visible World" (pp. 100-128)
• Ch. 9 "Beyond PaleoGIS?" (pp. 143-150)

April 22   Technology and Society: Past, Present, Future(s)     Frank, Joanna, Chris   These will be in your mail box April 5 or 6.

• Haraway, D. 1997. Semantics: Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium, in  Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience. Routledge, NY. pp. 23-45.
• Baudrillard, J. 1994. The Precession of Simulacra, in Simulacra and Simulation. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, pp. 1-42.
• Mitchell, W.J. 2003. Me++: The cyborg self and the networked city. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. (Chapter 7: "Electronic Mnemotechnics")

April 29   Presentations of Final Projects

Wed. May 11    Final Projects Due by 4:00 pm

Proposal for Final Projects:

This should be a summary of your idea for the final project. You should discuss the topic, why it's a good one, and what you plan to do for your project in one page. A second bibliography page of 8-12 references of helpful articles, websites, or other information should also be included.

Due April 8, 5:00pm to the digital drop box.